


Outside In

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-21
Updated: 2011-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-23 22:41:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that Street thinks it's <i>wrong</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outside In

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted May 2006.

Outside In  
By Candle Beck

 

So things move pretty fast when Street gets the closer job. Though it’s not really like that, it’s not like it was offered and he accepted, all interview-neat in his starched bleach-white shirt and red and blue striped tie. Dotel’s arm gives out and it’s an arithmetic equation of some kind, Tommy John surgery plus a torn slider equals Huston Street is the man.

It’s not like he had much of a choice. It probably would have happened anyway, glow-in-the-dark text on his arms, writ small like a tattoo inside his elbows.

Quickly, he comes home. Nice highways skirting the city of Oakland, Rich Harden sleeping in the shotgun seat with his cheek pressed pale to the window and his mouth open. Street gets very quiet and still when he’s pitching, and he loves the guys, honestly he does, with this kinda wild summer-burn inside him.

Street keeps track of numbers, takes the last out of each game to the clubhouse and writes in black ink, in the fat part between the red stitches, the date, the opponent, the score, and what save it is. Mostly, it’s a code, ‘7/8/05, Chicago, 4-2, #5.’ Twenty years down the line, twice as old as he is now, the numbers are gonna be the only thing he remembers, because green runs together and being on a plane so much is making everything shard.

And he can deal with that, the splinters in his palms, the slow roll-over from eleven fifty-nine to midnight. Bits and pieces like road trips, third innings, two blocks between stoplights. Street is still going to church, sometimes in airport chapels, freeze-dried Communion wafers, the bite of stale red wine. Everything is short-term, but that’s okay.

Street is living with Crosby and Harden and Melhuse, and that’s working out pretty well. Harden falls asleep on the living floor a lot, sweatshirt balled up for a pillow and his hand tucked between his knees. Crosby is probably insane, taking shots of hot sauce and tequila, angry spots of color on his face. Melhuse is just cool, silent and as calm as the field before batting practice. They’re always running late, and Harden pours water over his head in the car, streaks his hair flat and Crosby hollers at him for dripping on the leather.

Street likes his life very much. He doesn’t mind staying in hotels or eating at diners, because he can get chicken-fried steak anywhere, and the showers never run out of hot water. He can run with jetlag, light-headed and it’s easier to get drunk when your body is convinced it’s ten o’clock at night. Street doesn’t drink much, but he makes the best of it when he does.

Harden locks his keys in the car and that’s a good two hours, dry restaurant parking lot, waiting for the Triple-A guy to come, because they don’t really know where they are. Harden is pissed off, pacing a quick circle around his car, and Street is sitting on the hood, eating tortilla chips out of a white paper bag and swinging his feet.

“Quit that,” Harden says, coming up suddenly from Street’s side and placing a hand on his knee. Street jerks, surprised, blinks at him.

“You. Are making me nervous,” Harden tells him, drumming his fingers on the hook of Street’s kneecap. Harden looks irritated and kinda frantic, eyes too wide.

“Sorry.”

“Just, like. Be still for a second. Okay?”

Street nods assuredly, tightening his jaw, be still, he can do that. Harden sighs and leans against the car next to him, faded charcoal sky, smears of orange. Street sees Harden’s shoulders slowly relax, and the night feels like calendar pages, flip-booking. Three minutes before Harden starts talking about baseball and team gossip, and Street unconsciously starts to kick his leg again, short parabola and Harden’s hip against his knee. Waiting for Triple-A is, improbably, a fantastic way to spend the night.

Every other Sunday, when they’re home, Crosby washes and waxes his car, sunstruck out in the front driveway. Harden usually helps for about ten minutes and then wanders off to play basketball.

Crosby says it’s because his car is way better than anybody else’s on the team and he’s gotta maintain that, but Harden told Street that Crosby’s dad used to have the same routine when Crosby was a kid, little soaked Bobby scrubbing the hubcaps.

Street is slippery and his fingers are pruned, and the radio is pumping music across the yard, something loud and fast. There’s soap in his hair, white foam on Crosby’s shirt. Crosby never looks more at peace than when he’s washing his car.

Harden disappears for a while and Crosby and Street talk about random stuff, hollering over the music, gleaming black metal under their hands. When Harden comes back out, he’s got a big white David sunflower seeds bucket, filled with water balloons, and they peg the car until it’s rinsed off, wrinkled colorful balloon corpses scattering the driveway.

They turn on each other next, whooping and climbing onto the roof, and it’s a good day. Street can’t stop smiling, as Rich Harden uses him as a human shield, his hands hard on Street’s hips.

Crosby starts stories, “So this guy walks into a bar,” like, no joke. Street is waiting for punchlines, counting his blessings. Luck runs in him like blood, and this is something he can believe.

Pleasantly tired with caffeine drip in the back of his throat, talking to his girlfriend every night and Harden is gleefully shouting dirty words through the locked door, “Hey Huston get your fucking hand out of my pants, I’m not into that shit,” and Crosby is cackling with laughter, coughing and red-faced in the hallway when Street comes out with his best impression of anger.

“Knock it off, you guys, you’re freaking her out.”

As if that wasn’t the whole point. Street knows, okay. He’s kinda laughing too.

They get to play baseball every day, they go to the park under atomized pieces of clouds, threads straggling from the hems of their T-shirts. Crosby and Ellis are wrestling, arms necks elbows hands, and slamming into the wall, whole place shaking. Zito is dealing cards from the bottom of the deck, keeping up a steady stream of distracting chatter and literal aces up his sleeve, tucked into his watchband.

Street gets overwhelmed sometimes, the sheer weight of everything, the closer job and the team sprinting hard through the summer and being so happy. Being cleanly and unreservedly happy, like, like. Like stuff he can’t say out loud. Like this.

If he had to pick a favorite part, it would probably be Rich Harden, who takes care of him when he gets confused, when Dan Haren is drunk and speaking in rags, what did you when the tracks and there was this so fucking close man seen that because it’s not like it not gonna be different afterwards just shut the fuck up, and Zito is looking like a vampire with iced skin and avid dark eyes, Harden is there to explain that this is just what it’s like sometimes. And that isn’t much of an explanation, but, okay. It settles Street down and Harden levels him like a city, cut right back to basics, you are here, I am here, and we are going to be fine.

Street thinks maybe in a year or two, Harden might be his best friend, though it’s hard to say because they’re still so new to each other. He’s still learning what the angle of Harden’s hand means, and which of Harden’s stories are deeply exaggerated or completely made up. Street believes in longevity and he’s thankful that he doesn’t actually have to pick his favorite part, because he’s scared of jinxing it.

Goes for beer one night and gets back, smooth dark, crinkling plastic bag, crickets in the grass. Melhuse passes him yawning and says good night, and Street tries to get him to stay up, tries to make every night last as long as possible, but no good, Melhuse is half-asleep.

Street goes into the living room and starts to say, “Hey, listen-” but Crosby hisses at him, “quiet, man, he’s asleep.”

And so Harden is, slumped over against Crosby, his arms crossed on his chest. Loose hands, open fingers under the bends of Harden’s forearms. Crosby’s arm is around his shoulders and his hand is in Harden’s hair, bits of gold like lamplight and Street thinks there’s something not quite right about this, though it’s simple, it’s easy. Just the same as everything else this year, put together inch by inch until Street is made up somehow of pitches and infomercials, five miles an hour faster.

He ignores the uncomfortable feeling in his stomach and passes Crosby a beer, takes the armchair. Well, Street thinks, and that’s it. Well.

Brothers. Strange brotherly traditions, stuff that Street can’t question because it’s got nothing to do with him, not yet. In-jokes and history all red and yellow and white and blue. Green and gold. Harden, who rides with Street down out of the hills in search of fast food long past midnight, could fit right into Street’s own family with his blonde-brown hair and his compact shoulders, near-favorite. Crosby is like the tagalong friend who came for lunch and stuck around till breakfast.

Street doesn’t think much on it, falls asleep in the chair himself, and what can he say then? Melhuse is crunching his way through a bowl of cornflakes and they go back to the ballpark, and Street feels that same old joy, found a team with pairs of brothers and well-loved cousins, broad sprawling Texas family, can’t get any better.

Coast on the days and soon enough they’re back on the road, skyed, they’ve gone the long way to Los Angeles by way of Detroit and Baltimore, and now they’re flying north. Danny Haren’s still petitioning that they should get frequent flyer miles for this shit, and the traveling secretary is still saying, you don’t pay for the fucking flights, Dan.

Plane trip like a fifty-minute scan of summer, talking joyfully, the very many weeks behind them and a wide open highway before them, where the speed limit is safe and reasonable, and no fewer than four of them might win Rookie of the Year. Huston Street is emerging as the frontrunner, they’re the frontrunners, they’re in first place.

First place. Perfectly shaped words in Street’s mouth, Kirk Saarloos’s hair jagging up madly, backlit by the blue, tiny ovoid windows. Eric Chavez is grinning, his eyes wet, one week a father and winging home. Street can feel adrenaline burring in their faces, trembling eyelashes, shedding skins behind them, six hundred miles an hour through the air, and they just crushed the Orioles.

Zito finally gets caught cheating at cards, crumpled paper money and slick Bicycles cascading to the floor. Nobody’s as upset with him as they should be, though Crosby lunges for him, pauses with his hands out and Zito twitching, squirreling to get over the seat, run and hide in the lavatory, and Crosby looks back at Harden in the aisle behind him.

“Dude, hold me back,” Crosby implores, because he’s not really mad. Harden’s arms go around his waist, easy as that, and his face presses flush to Crosby’s back, and Crosby is shouting, “Fuckin’ cheater, I’ll kill you!” and Zito is laughing, begging for mercy.

They get home, good trip, see you tomorrow, and Crosby’s still got Zito’s money poking up gray-green from his pockets, stuffed into his shirt. They share a cab back to their house and Crosby and Harden and Street are shoved into the back, too much shoulder, too many arms, bruises in the shape of elbows forming on Street’s sides. Melhuse is in the front seat, chatting with the driver and ignoring them like unruly kids, which maybe they are. Crosby unearths a packet of sugar and spills it down the back of Melhuse’s shirt, and Melhuse swipes back at him, his hand brushing Street’s face, Crosby cowering into Harden.

They tumble inside and Melhuse is going to take a shower, rattling his shirt to get the sugar to rain out, calling Crosby unkind things. Street goes to call his girlfriend, but he can’t get a signal because the sky is gathering heavily above their house, and he comes back out to find Harden and Crosby still in the front hallway, except now Harden’s pressed up against the wall and Crosby is kissing him like it’s the end of the world.

Street can see it very clearly, Crosby’s forearm flat against the wall beside Harden’s head, hand spread out like a starfish, his other hand fisted on Harden’s stomach. Harden is tilting his head to the side and opening his mouth, and they’re both still kind of laughing. Doesn’t look like the first time, or anything near it, and Street turns, weird echo in his mind, almost audible draining in his chest, and goes back down the hall.

Doesn’t think about it. And the next morning he can’t meet their eyes.

Street goes through the motions, breakfast and Harden eating toast off a fork, biting off the edges in concentric circles, Crosby sharing a glass of orange juice with Melhuse, Huston Street curved into his shoulders and don’t say a word.

Crosby says something, must be funny, because Melhuse is snickering behind his hand and Harden is full-out laughing, his eyes screwed shut and his mouth half-open. Chewed-up toast visible and Street’s nose wrinkles, because that’s just gross. He watches Harden lean over to clock Crosby on the arm, and Crosby catches his hand, checking for a pulse, smiling at Harden like Harden just brought his hamster back to life, and Street looks away.

It’s none of his business.

They go to the ballpark and Street puts himself on the other side of the room, staring at a magazine. Zito and Crosby are arguing about what to play on the stereo, and Harden is sitting cross-legged on the couch, watching a game show with Haren. Street keeps seeing it, Crosby pressing Harden down, his knee between Harden’s legs, his hand flat on the wall. Eyes closed and laughing against each other’s mouths, like it was just normal, like it was a joke, like it wasn’t anything.

Zito comes over after a while and slumps down in a chair next to Street’s. Zito’s always doing that, long fold of his body and his legs going everywhere. “Boy,” Zito says, and Street’s not sure if that’s supposed to be directed at him or if it’s just Zito’s all-purpose expression of ennui. He doesn’t really know any of them that well.

Street hums noncommittally, thinking sickly that they were supposed to be brothers.

“You wanna play or something?” Zito asks, moving his hands in a way that could indicate either videogames or a guitar.

“Nah,” Street answers, runs his fingertip up and down the slick page of the magazine, trying to split the skin. Triangular flash of Harden’s white teeth when he turned his head and tipped his face up, Crosby had mumbled something and it made him smile.

“So, like, you’re just gonna be boring.” Zito sighs extravagantly and lets his head fall back, studying the ceiling. Zito makes everything look really interesting, but Street would follow his eyes and it would just be peeling plaster or highway signs.

Really tired, maybe he didn’t sleep so good last night. Maybe Harden and Crosby have gravitated towards each other across the room, and if Street looks over there, he’ll see Harden’s hand on the small of Crosby’s back, Harden’s low voice. Street doesn’t look over.

“Excuse me.” Zito thwacks him. “Trying to have a conversation, you know. A little civilization.”

Street blinks at him, feeling abruptly heartbroken.

“Hey,” Zito starts to say, his eyes widening, because whatever mean rumors they start up about him, he still won’t let any of them be hurt, but Street is up by then, and moving with the rasp of his feet on the carpet painfully loud in his ears.

Ducks into the bathroom and washes his hands, cold wet fingers against his eyes and breathing real careful, chanting the lineup in his mind, skipping over Bobby Crosby’s name, and he’s fine.

He’s fine.

And news travels fast, because Zito is very logical, in a very weird sort of way, and his immediate response to any problem is to try and fix it. His methods are usually less than reasonable, of course. First step is telling everybody that something is wrong with the kid, and then half the team is giving Street space and the other half is trying to cheer him out of it. Street can’t figure out which is worse. Both are pretty bad.

Crosby and Harden are distinctly in the cheer-him-up camp, greeting him with water balloons from the roof and changing all his radio pre-sets to mariachi music and thrash metal. Strange way of trying to make someone feel better, annoy them into a prank war, but Street’s mostly just tired, ineffably sad.

A week or two of avoiding everybody, eyes on the floor, hands in his pockets. Danny Haren is convinced that if he can just get Street drunk, everything will be okay. Street wants to disappear.

He plays basketball by himself in the driveway, past midnight and dully grateful that the house is soundproof and the rubber slap of the ball, the clang of the rim, won’t cause any harm inside. His hands turn black. The streetlights are far away and he keeps putting more force into his shots, exploding the ball against the pale outline of the backboard, making the house shake.

Throws too hard and the ball goes sailing onto the roof, clattering the shingles, whaps down into the yard. Street’s legs are trembling. He goes around the side of the house and the ball is resting in the grass under Harden’s window, curtains parted maybe three inches. Street can look inside, he can see Harden and Crosby on the bed in there, asleep.

Dead to the world, Harden on his back with his arm bent over his head, Crosby’s body crooked with his legs skewed, his fists tucked against Harden’s side. Harden is naked to the waist and Street stands there, holding the basketball, trying to find a place for this in his mind, trying to make it normal.

Crosby shifts and scrapes his buzzed hair against Harden’s biceps. Not enough light to see the look on Harden’s sleeping face, just enough to see him pull his arm free and slant it down across Crosby’s side, his loose hand hanging off over Crosby’s ribs. Street turns away, feels like he might be sick, and goes to bed without taking a shower, so that when he wakes up, there are grimy handprints on his sheets and sticky sweat all over him, and he can get through this, he’s gotten through worse.

Harden thumps down next to him on the couch and Street has let his guard down, glaze-eyed watching videos on VH1 Country, no time to leave the room. Harden tocks him on the knee and Street’s whole body twitches.

“So,” Harden says, scowling faintly at the television. Harden hates country music.

Street holds his elbows in his hands and tries not to move.

“You’re, like.” Harden trails off. Quiet for a minute and Street can try to wish himself away, wish himself all the way back to Austin, where none of his best friends ever make out with each other in the front hall and no one makes his stomach hurt the way Rich Harden does.

Harden shifts so that his leg is against Street’s. Street’s breath catches in his throat. “Did your girlfriend cheat on you or something?”

Aghast, Street shoots him a look without thinking about it, and that’s not a good idea because Harden’s face is concerned, blue eyes taking up space like streetlights, and Street can feel his heart rattle.

“No,” he manages. Though who knows, because he hasn’t spoken to his girlfriend in a week, cowardly dodging her calls, like she’ll be able to hear it through the phone lines, the warped places his mind keeps going.

“Your dog died?”

“Jeez, Richie. No.”

Street doesn’t like this, litany of all the things that might’ve gone wrong with him and how long before Rich stumbles over the real one. He doesn’t like Harden right here next to him on the couch and everyone on the television singing about tragic love and alcoholism.

“Well then, why’re you all-”

Quick sharp burst of something behind his eyes, unrecognizable and Street is snapping, “I don’t want to talk about it, man, ‘specially not with you.”

Black taste in the back of his mouth. Harden staring at him in shock, none of them have ever heard Street speak in anger, because Street hardly ever does, can’t remember the last time, and it sounds so foreign and wracked, twisting around inside his mind.

He immediately tries to apologize, but now Harden is cutting him off, which is only fair, Street supposes.

“What the fuck does that mean, especially not with me? What the fuck did I do?”

Street’s face is on fire, and he stands, feeling his shirt pull from where it was pinned against his side by Harden’s knee. Center-of-a-flame blue, set the world on fire and Harden is saying angrily, “Hey,” but Street is already out of the room.

He needs to stay out of rooms that contain Rich Harden.

That’s hard, hard thing to ask of himself, hard to go through days and not have Harden calm him down with a cool look, make him snort soda through his nose, grin at him from the passenger seat and tell him dryly that he missed the exit, but it’s okay.

Street’s swimming laps, pressure on his sinuses and his chest. Sunlight falling through the blue water in leaf-shaped pieces, passing under the floating chair and the shadow makes him cold. He comes up for air and Melhuse is sitting in one of the deck chairs, watching him.

Latching onto the side of the pool, Street breathes hard and asks, “What?”

Melhuse lifts a shoulder. “You tell me.”

Street bites the insides of his mouth. “It’s nothing, Adam. I’m fine,” and he ducks under again, silent world. Chlorine burning in his eyes, he might be crying, he’s not sure.

Second time up, and Melhuse has perfect timing, says as the water slides out of Street’s ears, “Rich thinks he did something wrong.”

Street rests his chin on the rough lip of the pool. “He didn’t,” he replies softly.

“Okay. Maybe you wanna stop acting like he’s invisible, then?”

Trying to glare at him, wishing he knew how to swear, Street pushes off the edge and cuts through another fast lap, planning his response.

Resurfaces and says, “I just want to be left alone.” Not very good, as responses go, but Street is half-drowned, dumb with hunger.

“Yeah, somehow I doubt it. C’mon, what’d he do?”

Street swipes his hand across his eyes. “Nothing, okay. I don’t care what he does.”

He chances a look and sees Melhuse’s face draw shrewd. “Fuck, you saw them, didn’t you?”

Street lets go of the side and sinks down under the water, crawling his fingers on the wall, tap-tap third-degree, heaviness on his shoulders, making his back ache. Comes up for air, and Melhuse is still there.

“You knew?” he asks. His throat feels slick.

“Of course I did. You’ll notice they’re not very subtle in their own house.”

Street swallows. “What about the others?”

Melhuse shrugs with one shoulder, watching Street very carefully. “Yeah, some of them. Are you all fucked up about it or something?”

Ignoring that, Street finds another question, intent on knowing everything. “How long? I mean. Them. How long?”

“Well, they never exactly told us the full story, but since Double-A, I think. Years.”

Street stares at his hands on the lip of the pool, skinny damp fingerprints pressed into the dull gray. He can feel his hair tinting green from the chlorine, his vision clouded with blue water. When Harden and Crosby were in the Texas League together, Street was halfway across the state, a sophomore in college and still eating most of his dinners at home.

“They shouldn’t be doing that,” he says almost too quiet to hear.

Melhuse doesn’t say anything for a while, and when Street looks up, Melhuse is showing more on his face than he ever has before, pure hard-eyed contempt. Street shivers from it.

“Look, Huston, you seem like a good kid and everything, so believe me when I tell you that saying shit like that is the quickest way to end up without any friends on this team. Those two would walk into fucking traffic for you.”

Melhuse gets up and stalks inside and Street is unbearably ashamed, wanting to call him back, because that’s not what he meant, it’s not like he thinks it’s wrong.

Ten laps later and Street is still trying to figure out why it bothers him so much if he doesn’t think it’s wrong.

The season goes on. Street guesses that was probably inevitable. They go back on the road and it’s impossibly difficult to be on the plane with everyone, wondering who knows and who doesn’t, hearing Harden and Crosby two rows up, talking and laughing sometimes, and Street remembers when he would have taken the seat right behind and popped his head into their conversation. The first few months of the season are already perfectly crystallized in his memory, like his seven-year-old summer, like his junior year in college. He didn’t expect that to happen, nostalgia this awful disease inside.

He plays spider solitaire on his computer until the battery dies, by which point most everyone is asleep, spaceship reading lights hovering above them. Fly into New York City and it makes his pulse jump, like Harden stretching in the aisle, his shirt riding up so that Street can see a shadowy wedge of his hip.

A knock on his hotel room door the next night, waking him up. He’d fallen asleep way too early, abstractly thinking that more sleep means less time to roll it over in his mind. Street rolls over. Pads to the door in pajama pants and Longhorns T-shirt, fuzzy like three-beers buzzed, forgetting to check the peephole.

Harden is slouched against the door on the opposite side of the hallway, his hands tucked behind his back. “Adam says you’ve got a problem.”

Biting back whatever cutting thing he would have said if he’d been wired that way, Street moves his shoulders and locks his eyes on the collar of Harden’s T-shirt. There’s a sculpted glass light fixture to the left of Harden, yellow slanting across his body at a bizarre angle.

“I do not.”

Harden lifts an eyebrow, looking cool as a cigarette ad. “Really? Because it’s not like anyone would blame you for freaking out a little bit. I mean, it’s not every day you find out your roommates are fuck-”

Street grabs him, moving in self-preservation, fists a hand in Harden’s shirt and hauls him inside, fearfully checking the hallway before slamming the door shut.

“What’s the matter with you?” Street asks fiercely, but Harden’s laughing.

Harden is laughing. Street is clear of thought.

“Oh, man, dude,” Harden says, grinning at him, settling down. “Jesus, it’s not that bad, is it?”

Street shakes his head. He doesn’t know what Harden’s talking about. He must look stricken, because Harden’s expression tightens and the remnants of his laughter escape under the door.

“You could stop looking like I’m gonna kill you, Huston, and that’d be good,” Harden tells him, his voice icing slightly.

Street turns away, thinks about getting a drink from the mini-bar but decides against it. He starts unpacking, loading his folded clothes into the dresser.

“Adam got it wrong, okay. I’m fine,” for maybe the six hundredth time in a month. Street stares at his hands moving, suitcase, T-shirts, drawer. Shiny wooden knobs, blue and yellow flower-patterned drawer liners inside.

“Right. So you’re unpacking even though we’re leaving tomorrow. Nice.”

Street flushes deeply but doesn’t stop. He can hear Harden sigh behind him, the soft sound as Harden sits down on the bed.

“Never took you for the type, man,” Harden says low.

Street glances at the mirror and sees Harden leaning back on his hands, shirt pulled tight across his chest, watching him hatefully like Street’s the worst kind of traitor. Street doesn’t say anything.

“Like, sorry if we’ve fucked with your expectations or whatever, but your expectations are not exactly our responsibility. Me and him, we came first. We fucking pre-date you.”

Voice rising, Harden is getting upset, on account of Street’s silence and Street’s humiliation and Street’s turned back. Harden is saying with a manic blue sneer, “I don’t know where you get the fucking balls, man, to act like we’re fucking beneath you or something, like I was only your friend so long as I didn’t make you uncomfortable, like, so fucking sorry, hate to fucking bring you down. Not gonna leave him because you’ve got a problem with it, can’t believe you think I would. You and him are just fucking miles apart, you think I’ve missed you the way I’d miss him?”

Street’s heart seems to be shrinking, leeching all the air out of him. He keeps cheating looks into the mirror and Harden’s arms, bigger than they should be bracketing his slight body, and Harden’s mouth like a gash chipped out of stone, and Harden’s eyes, dear god almighty, Harden’s eyes. Street could turn off all the lights and still be able to see in the dark, as long as Harden keeps his eyes open.

Street can’t stand to see him so disappointed and hurt, teeth raking out hard-syllabled words and his hands clenched in the bedspread. Street is putting Harden in danger somehow, swore he never would.

“Hey, hey,” Street says, interrupting whatever terrible things Harden is saying. He forces himself to meet Harden’s eyes in the mirror. “You’re right.”

Harden blinks. “I am?”

Street turns carefully, the room turning with him, leans back against the dresser. “I’m being dumb.”

Harden’s mouth closes slowly, and he nods, looking suspicious. “Little bit, yeah.”

Street waves his hand in the air, swallowing past something thick and sharp and his chest feels like it’s been cracked open. He smiles. “You and him, it’s great.”

Studying him for a long moment, his eyebrows pinched together, Harden’s hands loosen on the bedspread. “Don’t go zero to sixty, man. Take some time to adjust.” He sounds weird and flat.

“I’m adjusted,” Street protests, clutching at the edge of the dresser. Needs to hang on. He keeps thinking, they’ve had years, they’ve had Texas and Sacramento and a whole season in Oakland before Street showed up. Street was a different person when he was a sophomore in college, they’re probably changed too. It’s, like, a lifetime.

“So you’re not gonna be weird anymore?” Harden asks, but that gets lost because Street is saying stupidly at the same moment:

“You love him?”

“Christ, dude.” Harden’s face twists, half-disgusted, and Street is shaking his head fast, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Never mind, sorry, sorry.”

Quiet again. City quiet, anyway, shuffle-scream of street noise drifting up the eleven flights. Street’s heart is beating way too fast, his face dull brick red.

“Look,” Harden says, and Street waits for him to say, you’re a good kid and you’ll end up with no friends on this team, which almost sounds okay, nobody to mess him up, but Harden continues, “I just wanted to make sure that we’re cool. It shouldn’t change anything, because it’s always been like this, you just never knew.”

Street nods, terrified that he’s going to cry. Steady his voice and pull his shoulders up and what a nice smile, what a sweet boy.

“We’re cool, Richie. I. I am sorry.”

Harden tips his head to the side, vaguely confused, but that’s as much as Street can stomach tonight, and he’s half out the door, talking loudly about getting dinner, and four rooms down, looks back to see Harden following.

Right back to normal. Pretty bad, unsteady on his feet, showing his teeth when people ask him how he is, wishing he could get into every game, wishing he was a position player, something he has not been in almost ten years.

Harden is cautious for a couple of days, keeping an eye on him and keeping his hands off Crosby when Street is in the room, but Harden has a short attention span and by the end of the road trip, he’s hanging onto Crosby’s shoulders again, letting himself be carried with his face on the back of Crosby’s neck and his sneakers two inches off the ground.

Street thinks bitterly that his broken peace should mean more to Harden, should merit at least a week of not shoving it in his face. He wants to siphon off some of the tension in his back and the steady ache in his head, make Harden understand how bad it is now. Then he stops, hands gone all crazy. His own cruelty makes no sense to him, as if he’s altering cell by cell, mutating. He’s never had friends like this.

And they’re friends again, they get home to Oakland where the weather has been perfect for months and Harden bullies him into coming to the bar even though Street’s body is dense with overwork and praying for sleep. Harden buys him a few beers and then Cokes all night long, and Street lies awake, caffeine shattering in his veins, staring at the ceiling.

Crosby avoids him, mostly, and Street can’t figure out how Crosby really fits into all of this, so he’s thankful for that. He can imagine Crosby and Harden, talking in the dark, hands across each others’ bodies, Harden telling him that the kid is a little screwed up about it, and Crosby nodding, his chin on Harden’s chest. Crosby’s default response to distress is to quickly remove himself from the situation.

Crosby breaks his ankle, anyway, impossible to get away from, though he does his best, and he’s back on the field two and a half weeks later. Street watches Harden watching him, pinpoint anger. Harden didn’t want Crosby to go back so soon, Street had heard them arguing about it through the wall. Heard Harden’s voice crack, you want to fucking kill yourself, just stay down, and Crosby hadn’t responded, or at least not so Street could hear, just hopped in place for the coaches and his mouth a pencil line, pain shining brightly in his eyes.

So Crosby is back, and Harden’s hands are clenched on the rail, flinching at every hard slide into second, every falter in Crosby’s stride over first base. Street keeps repeating it to himself, half in disbelief, non-displaced fracture.

They’re coming fast upon the end of the season, and things are falling apart. Harden puts his arm around Street’s shoulders at the bar one night and doesn’t let him go for hours. Street can barely sleep, up all night on the internet reading Wikipedia and playing videogames.

Somewhere in there, Street’s girlfriend breaks up with him on his voicemail, crying and saying, “Maybe when you come home, baby, but I can’t keep this up all by myself.”

Street hasn’t talked to her in almost a month. Feels her absence like a keychain he liked a lot and lost in transit.

There’s a night, deep in September, after they’ve already lost the division and still have a week to play, when Street finds Harden sitting in the hallway with his head on his knees, his hands hooked on the back of his neck. Street pauses, hovering awkwardly above him. He doesn’t know if Harden is okay or if he’s even allowed to ask. He settles for a cough, and Harden promptly says, muffled:

“What.”

Street shrugs helplessly, though Harden can’t see him. Harden seems to get it, though, and after a moment Harden’s hoarse voice returns, “I don’t want to play anymore.”

It sticks like a burr. Doesn’t want to play for the week left in the season or forever? Harden shouldn’t say that kind of stuff to Street, shouldn’t expect Street to be smart enough to come up with a good answer. Street can do stuff like buy the right kind of soup to beat a cold and stitch patches into their jeans, because Street is the oldest of four and had to make sure the house didn’t burn down, but he doesn’t have a cure for this.

Street finds himself staring at where Harden’s hair is pushed up by his laced fingers, forming a soft hedge. His throat is dry and his head, his head is killing him.

“Stay for a minute, will you?” Harden asks roughly.

Street jerks a guilty look at the carpet, biting the inside of his lip. Crosby is somewhere. Light pours out from under Melhuse’s door. Street never wants to leave this house, never wants to go back to Texas, never wants to have to show up in Phoenix five months from now and face down a whole new season, see Rich Harden in the sunlight with their fragile shortstop foremost in his mind and Huston Street just the kid who sleeps down the hall.

Street sits down beside him, scared half to death, and for the rest of his life, looking for the end of his rookie year, Street will not remember the game the Angels clinched or the day they cleaned out their lockers. He’ll remember this, sitting next to Rich Harden in the unlit hallway of their hollow rented house, the carpet scuffing, the wall strict against his back, not saying a word as Harden leans over slowly until they are angled into each other and Harden is heavy-warm, and Street is not thinking about anything, not even drawing breath.

Off-season, terrible, flying down the hill on his bike and not seeing the curb, laws of physics because they are all still in motion and they will remain in motion even as the rest of the world comes to a stop around them. The wind has been knocked out of him and back home in Austin, Street doesn’t call his girlfriend.

His parents are very proud of him. They put his Rookie of the Year trophy on the mantle, arranging the family pictures carefully around it, and his dad keeps clapping him on the back, asking him if he wants to throw the football around in the front yard.

The team is scattered like loose change, and for a couple of weeks, as Street is trying to get used to being still, feeling caved in, he talks more to Danny Haren than anyone else.

It’s Haren who tells him that Harden is staying with Crosby in Long Beach. Danny’s rudely chewing gum on the phone and talking about how he met up with them last night at a California roadhouse twenty miles into the desert.

“And we went back to their place after, which, like, we need to seriously have an intervention or something,” Haren is saying.

Street is lying on his childhood bed, staring at the ceiling. “Intervention?”

“Bobby thinks he drives better when he’s drunk.”

“Um.” Tapping his fingers on his stomach, Street imagines ten-car pileups.

“Rich is good, though, steals his keys. Everybody gets through the winter alive, we’re gonna have to buy his drinks all year.”

That seems counterproductive, but Street’s mind is backtracking, catching up on something before Bobby Crosby’s bloody death. “Wait. Their place?”

Haren snaps his gum. “Yeah, this house down on the beach. Which, like, I don’t know why they wanna live down there, they hardly ever even go outside.”

Street can see it, skin paling out of the sun. But he’s trying to rearrange the words to be less implicit. He thought, without the team, they’d drift apart from each other, Rich Harden in Canada and Bobby Crosby two thousand miles down the coast. Street hadn’t realized it was a constant. He wonders if Haren knows, thinks probably not.

“I. I didn’t know Rich was staying with him.” Same exact cracks and water stains on the ceiling as when Street was sixteen years old, tiger in the corner, running man over the foot of the bed.

“Right? You’d think they woulda got sick of each other during the season.”

You’d think that, but Street knows better, because he once saw Harden and Crosby asleep in the same bed, saw how they shifted around each other unconsciously, and how long do you have to sleep with someone before you move when they move?

“You should come out, dude,” Haren tells him, and Street pictures it, gliding in the flat Los Angeles light, pulling up at intersections and seeing the ocean. But there are wide open spaces in Street’s mind and Texas is better at filling him up.

“Maybe.” Nicked wood dresser, photographs still in red and yellow envelopes, his collection of glass Coke bottles kaleidoscopic in the sunlight. Coming home, everything seems small.

Danny Haren, it turns out, is bored enough to fly out to get Street, calling him without warning from the airport and grinning when Street tells him he’s crazy. They spend three days careening around Austin at double the speed limit, and Street’s parents pretty much adopt Haren, who is well-mannered and helps clear the table and seems unnaturally tall in their little house. He sleeps in a sleeping bag on the floor of Street’s room, his face creased and hatch-marked by the carpet.

Then Haren essentially kidnaps him, ignoring Street’s low protests that he really needs to stay home, he’s got some stuff to do, and a bunch of people he still hasn’t seen, and there’s this concert he wants to go to, and UT is having some sort of thing for the baseball team that he was invited to, and, and, and.

And Haren is buying their plane tickets and reminding Street to take off his shoes as they go through security. Street’s socks don’t match, and the shuffle of his feet on the floor makes static electricity zing through his fingers when he reaches for Haren’s sleeve, when he says, “I really don’t want to go to California.”

“Sure you do,” Haren says smoothly, and somehow that shuts Street down, stymies him, thinking with his brow furrowed that it’s been a month and a half since he saw Harden and maybe his heart has grown fonder.

Sleeps on the plane, his cheek numb against the window. Can’t get his feet under him, stumbling through baggage claim and into the cab, almost falls walking up Haren’s front steps, and then Haren is showing him the spare bedroom and Street is sinking gratefully down, black-red spots on the backs of his eyelids and all the windows are open, bugs smashed on the screen.

He wakes up and finds Harden in Danny’s kitchen, eating Cheerios with a fork the way he always does.

“Oh, um.” Street stops in the doorway, weird state of mind, eyes working too hard to soak up the light that flies through the huge windows. Harden waves at him with his fork, grinning messily.

“Dude. Dan said he’d bring you, but I didn’t think you’d really come.”

Harden clatters his bowl onto the table and gives Street a tight hug, and Street feels the pull of the muscles in Harden’s forearms against his sides, doesn’t quite have time to hug him back before Harden is stepping away.

Street just stares at him, his mouth stupidly open. Haren comes into the room and puts Harden in a headlock for finishing off the milk, and Street is able to sorta fade into the white-painted walls and eat toast for breakfast and smile normally when they look to him expectantly after a joke.

It’s different and strange and Street keeps thinking that they’re missing something, running late, they were supposed to be at the ballpark an hour ago. Haren’s on his fourth beer and Street almost tells him to go easy because the coaches hate it when they come in hungover, and then he remembers.

Crosby turns up the second day, when the three of them are still hanging around in Haren’s living room with a soap opera on in the background. Cassandra is cheating on Luke with his twin brother Dallas, and it’s possible that she’s also their long-lost sister. Street is paying too much attention, because Crosby crashes down on the couch next to Harden and it’s important to ignore the fact that they’re pressed up against each other like shirts in a closet.

Which answers the question of whether or not Haren knows, because Haren is kicking at Crosby’s leg and saying, “Tell your fucking boyfriend to buy me some more milk.”

Cassandra slaps one of the brothers, Street can’t tell them apart, just the crack of her palm, startlingly loud, the side of Street’s face burning in sympathy and unable to stop hearing, boyfriend. your boyfriend.

They don’t care so much, in the off-season, about getting caught or offending someone, which Street guesses is fair, because he told Harden that he was cool with it and Street always lives up to his word. But it’s worse than he would have thought, to see the ease with which Harden hooks his arm around Crosby’s shoulders, the way Crosby’s hand is on Harden’s leg, rattling away, discontent to be still.

They go out to a bar and maybe this time it’s Street who has too much to drink, because Harden’s hand alights on the small of Crosby’s back, leaning in to shout something in his ear, and Street is reaching out, slapping it away.

Harden turns to look at him with surprise on his face. Street doesn’t know what he meant by that, just knows the slide of his fingers on Harden’s wrist, the prominent bones on the back of his hand like speedbumps.

“What?” Harden says, and Crosby glances back at them, then back to the bar where he’s finally got the bartender’s attention.

“Careful,” Street says, almost stuttering but not quite. Not quite. “You should. Be careful.”

Showing his teeth, Harden says, “I wasn’t gonna blow him on the dancefloor or anything, dude.”

Street hisses, his face warping at the image, which is alone in his mind for a minute, held up against the black, Harden on his knees and the crowd circled around them, Crosby’s hands clutching the back of Harden’s head and his jeans split, Harden’s fingers curled in the denim. Street wants to dig his nails into his eyes, but instead he says recklessly and without thought:

“Just don’t act like such a-”

And thank god he stops himself in time, but it doesn’t matter, because Harden’s eyes go wild, and he shoves Street hard, into a group of people and someone spills his beer, cold wet on Street’s back and Harden is yelling:

“Like what? Like a fucking faggot, Huston, you little bitch?”

Street spins, crashes into someone and feels the sweet rustle of silk on his face, run run, pushes through the crowd and into the night.

Haren finds him out there, confused worried expression and Street is sitting on the hood of the car, remembering a Mexican restaurant and the keys locked inside.

Haren puts his hands in his pockets and looks up at the sky. Street waits for him to say something, and waits, and waits, and eventually cracks his wrists and says, “I didn’t mean it. He knows I didn’t mean it.”

Glancing at him, Haren shrugs. Miserable, Street picks at the wet spot on his shirt, pulling it away from his skin.

“You just. You gotta think about what it’s like for them. Trusting people with something like this. You know what would happen if the wrong person found out.”

Street nods, not at all liking the man he has turned into, not at all sure how to fix it. Harden didn’t trust him with it, anyway, he found out by accident, and for the first time, Street wonders why Harden was keeping it a secret. They lived in the same house. Supposed to be brothers.

Haren continues, “And, like. You say something and it’s like he shouldn’t have trusted you, either. Like you’re no better than anybody who’d want. Want to fuck them over, ruin their lives. I mean, like,” and Haren widens his eyes, puts his hand on the hood of the car. “Ruin their lives. You get that, right?”

Street nods again. Tries to pinpoint this feeling, this shame and fear and despair, like his bones are dust and he’s collapsing inward. “I do. I’d never. I’d do anything to keep him safe.”

Haren’s eyebrows twitch up, and Street rewinds it in his mind, realizes he should have said ‘them,’ but of course it’s too late.

Haren lets it go, nods. “Okay then.” He rolls his neck. “You ready to head out?”

Running a hand through his hair, Street gestures at the bar. “What about them?”

Haren half-grins. “Bobby’s still trying to calm him down. They’ll find their own way home.”

They get in the car and Street watches Los Angeles float by through the window, calls Harden when he gets back in the guest room and leaves a bad message on his voicemail, just him saying, “I’m sorry, man, so sorry,” and that’s all he seems to be able to say to Rich Harden these days.

A week in California and Harden eventually comes by again, forgives Street implicitly by bringing a six of his favorite beer, though they don’t really talk. Whenever Haren leaves the room, they sit in terrible silence, picking at the damp labels on the bottles, scowling at their hands.

They drive east to Van Nuys one night to meet up with Zito, an unsettling off-season version of Zito who can’t follow a conversation and keeps scratching at the birthmark on his wrist. Crosby crawls all over him, trying to spur a reaction, but Zito only pushes Crosby towards Harden and says, bewildered, “What? What?” like he just woke up.

Street’s in the kitchen, waiting for the microwave and reading the postcards and movie tickets that Zito’s got magneted to his refrigerator. Crosby comes in, nudges him out of the way to get a fresh beer, bloodlessly washed by the chilled refrigerator light, and tells Street without looking at him, “Don’t ever say something like that to him again, do you fucking understand me?”

And then leaves.

Street is frozen, holding onto the counter with both hands. He didn’t even really say anything, Harden jumped to a conclusion and maybe it was the right one, but still. Still. The microwave’s high ping startles him, and he takes his hot chocolate out with shaking hands, swallowing thickly, trying to figure out why he thought hot chocolate would be a good idea.

Crosby doesn’t look at him when he comes back into the room and after an hour or so, Street’s heart stops beating so fast. There’s talk of going to Scottsdale to see Chavez and Mulder, but they can’t decide on a good weekend for it, which seems strange, because it’s not like any of them have pressing business or anything. Street never even met Mark Mulder, so he mainly just listens when the others tell old stories, and then it’s time to go.

Unlike his parents, Danny Haren lets him sleep as long as he wants, and Street loses most of his days, sunlight rich on his back when he finally stirs.

Harden’s there the morning Street leaves, rides along on the way to the airport, and he puts his hand on the back of Street’s neck at one point, just kinda brief and inconsequential, drawing Street’s attention to the joke he’s making, though really Street is impossibly distracted by the calluses on Harden’s fingers.

On the curb, Harden’s eyes are too blue to be read and he says, “Don’t be a stranger, man,” and Street says, “Tell Bobby I said see you later,” and it’s almost normal, except that Haren hugs him and Harden doesn’t, but whatever.

Back in Texas, he calls his ex-girlfriend and asks her to take him back. She sounds perfectly stunned, but agrees, and then for awhile Street is in high school again, hanging out with his same friends, shouting at his brother for using his razor.

His girlfriend tells him he’s different, one night in January, and Street puts his arms around her, doesn’t ask how she means.

He misses Rich Harden terribly in the flat weeks, no more than he misses Zito or Chavez or Mark Ellis or even Crosby, who’d actually handled the whole thing pretty well, all things considered. But Harden is a loose end right now, a very familiar guilt that Street can feel pushing at the roof of his mouth when he sits in confession every week. Street sits in the driveway waiting for songs to finish before he gets out of the car and goes inside. He never leaves a movie halfway through, and he can’t shake the feeling that Harden cut him off when he was trying to say something important. Life’s unfinished and Street can’t stand that.

Soon enough, though, it’s time to go back to Phoenix.

And Street is terrified, scared like he’s scared of spiders, and he wouldn’t have expected that. He’s scared because his first night in town, Danny Haren invites him out and Harden is there, slouching against the wall with his shoulders up and his arms crossed, watching Haren kick a soccer ball around the yard.

Street slows, odd sideways angle of Harden, the tilt of the house, the fall of the sun, Harden’s clean neck and the cut of his cheekbone, scruffed jaw, and Street can see his fingers tapping away on his side under his arm. Seeing him is like getting punched right between the shoulder blades.

Harden hears his footsteps and looks back and the sun crashes into the back of his head, lighting him up, and Harden’s face is guarded, calm and watchful and pilot-lit, and Street can taste his own heart.

“Hey,” Harden says. Street just kind of stares at him, and Haren is shouting happily, bouncing the ball from foot to knee and back again.

Giving him an inscrutable look, Harden pushes off the wall and asks Haren if they’re ever gonna fucking leave, and then disappears inside. Street wanders over to Haren in a daze. Haren stops with the ball long enough to crack Street on the back a few times.

“What’s up, man, been like a year,” Haren says, smiling whitely. Street tries to echo it, but it doesn’t work, and Haren’s eyebrows hunch down. “You okay?”

Street shakes his head, finds his voice. “Fine, I’m fine.”

They go to a bar and Street does everything in his power to avoid being alone with Harden. His skin tightens at the simple thought of it, because he knows they won’t be able to talk, not like normal, not like before. Street can barely even remember what it was like before, when he and Harden would go for fast food in the middle of the night and stay up all hours watching movies they’d both seen twenty-seven times.

Street keeps a hand on Haren’s arm to make sure he doesn’t leave, snatching glances at Harden and biting the insides of his cheeks. He feels drunk already, drunk enough to be confused by written language and the mechanics of standing straight, listing constantly to the side.

He’s not talking much, not holding up his end of the conversation. Harden’s got pale thin strips on the side of his face from sunglasses. He’s wearing his lightning bolt necklace, though usually he never does when he’s not pitching, and sometimes he winds his fingers in the chain and Street can see the skin of his shoulder, which is probably neatly cooled and tastes like metal.

Street catches himself and there’s blood in his mouth. Haren is looking at him worriedly, Harden just cool, always so cool, still not really trusting him. Street spends a lot of time staring at his hands.

Danny goes to make a phone call at one point and it’s Street’s worst nightmare, alone with Harden and nothing to say. Harden sips at his beer and Street feels the pressure of Harden’s gaze, a red dot in the center of his forehead like he’s about to be shot.

“So.”

Street jerks, swallows hard. “Hmm?” he responds, trying to act like he hadn’t noticed the suffocating quiet, but he can’t look Harden in the eye. He keeps picturing it, Harden and Crosby, Harden’s hand sliding up inside Crosby’s sleeve, vanishing the top half of his fingers. Harden tilting his head back and opening his mouth.

“Fuck you, man,” Harden says harshly, and Street’s head snaps up, neck pops so sharp it hurts, and Harden is shoving out of the booth, stalking out of the bar.

Street doesn’t move for a moment, then gets up and follows him.

Standing in the streetlight, hands in his pockets, sliced out like a grainy newspaper photograph. Dull Phoenix cold in the air, Rich Harden sneering at him as he approaches and Street looks to the sky, wonders if he denies God at this moment, will he be struck down and never have to look at Rich Harden again, never have to force words past this hot itchy feeling in his throat?

“Rich?” he says, very soft like it’s made of eggshells.

Eyes big like for-rent signs in apartment windows and rife with anger, and Street can’t remember the last time that Harden wasn’t angry at him.

“You can’t even talk to me anymore?” Harden demands. “You can’t even, like, sit in the bar and say something about the fucking weather?”

Feeling awful, scratching at the hollows of his elbows, Street tries and tries, but there’s barely weather down here, just a breeze mild enough not to be noticed and a truck wheel moon taking up a quarter of the sky. Street tries, but he ends up just staring at Harden helplessly, badly wanting to touch his face.

Harden throws up his hands, half-turning away. “Fine. Jesus. Can’t even fucking talk to me. Disgust you that much, great. Real great.”

Street reaches out for him, stops short and pulls his hand back, curling it into a claw. “You. You didn’t give me a chance.”

“Well, shit, man, go right the fuck ahead. Is somebody stopping you?” Harden gestures hard, cuts the air in half, still showing Street his shoulder and not his face.

Five months shy of a year now, since Street saw Crosby kissing Harden in the hallway after they got back from the airport, since he turned away and pretended he hadn’t seen it, since his perfect life began to chip apart. Five months shy of a year and all of it climbing up into Street’s throat, pushed high out of his lungs. Stuff like, you don’t disgust me, and please stop being mad, please stop thinking I hate you, you make me crazy, don’t want it to be like this anymore.

All sorts of stuff. Nothing he can say out loud.

So he settles again, brokenly, for, “I’m sorry.”

“Jesus, would you quit _saying_ that.”

Street flinches like he’s been hit, which is maybe not too far off, because Harden’s hands are hard in fists, and Street bites his tongue to keep from saying it again. He slumps back against the wall, totally useless.

“You said you were cool with it,” Harden tells him.

“I am.”

“Then fucking _act_ like it, Huston. God.”

“What do you want me to say?” Flash like temper behind his eyes. Unaccustomed, Street blinks and Harden’s face appears slowly, rising like the moon. “I mean. I said we were cool, we are. Okay? But I can’t. I can’t talk like this. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Harden looks at him for a second, and blows out a breath. “I can’t spend the whole season waiting for you to decide it’s too weird and bug out again.”

Street shakes his head, watching the play of streetlight over Harden’s shoulders. “I won’t.”

“Fuck you won’t. I’m sure you’ve, like, never had to deal with it before, but just. Deal with it, will you? Because I don’t. I don’t want to not be friends with you anymore.”

Hits him right where he lives, every sense of it, low in his stomach where Street can’t get calm, and he’s astonished to find his eyes tearing. He looks quickly up, the dizzying slope of the building running away, blinking fast until his vision is clear again. He breathes for a little while, and when he looks back down, Harden’s body is curved protectively inward, hunched, waiting for him.

Street tries to smile, and moves forward, touches Harden’s arm. It’s no good for a second, Harden’s arm tensing and a distrustful expression casting across his features, but Street makes his fingers fold down and then it’s okay. He can feel a line of skin at the bottom of Harden’s sleeve, warm in the heel of his hand.

“Okay,” Street says, and that’s it. Harden narrows his eyes, moves as if to pull his arm away, but Street won’t let him go. “Okay,” he says again, and waits for Harden to relax, the muscle of his arm fitting into Street’s palm. Waits for Harden’s eyes to show up all glassy and relieved in the orange light, and Street’s whole world is localized at the place where his hand is touching Harden’s bare skin.

So then it’s better, and they go back inside and Haren doesn’t even seem to notice that they were gone. It happened fast. Street starts to pick up, starts to roll his eyes at Harden and argue about what to put on the jukebox and it’s okay then, honestly.

Harden smiles at him and Street can’t breathe. But that’s nothing to worry about.

They leave late, stretching out their arms on the curb, and Haren is happy drunk, hugging them both without reason. Harden laughs, pushes him off, says, “Man, careful, I gotta get back in one piece.”

“Wasn’t gonna tear off your arms,” Haren mumbles into Street’s hair, his arms heavy around his waist. Street stands stock-still, because he’s serving as a leaning post for Haren right now.

“You’re kinda creepy when you’re drunk.”

Haren grins, his chin digging hard into the top of Street’s head. Street bulges his eyes at Harden, please get him off me. Harden laughs and hooks a hand in Haren’s belt, drags him off, steadies him on the curb and hails a cab. Haren hangs half out the window, beaming at them.

“It was good to see you again,” Haren says to Street, bizarrely formal. Street pushes Haren’s hair off his forehead with a smirk.

“You’ll see me tomorrow.”

“I will! Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow we will be in the same place. Good.” Haren nods to himself. “Good.” Disappears into the backseat, dagger of white teeth and his hands pounding on the driver’s seat.

Left alone on the curb, Harden bends a tired grin at Street. “You want a ride back?”

Street thinks about that for a moment, fifteen minutes alone in the dark car with Harden and the terse apprehensive peace they’ve so recently forged. Thinks about Harden’s hands on the wheel, and shakes his head. “Nah. It’s the total opposite direction.”

Harden shrugs. He’s shivering a little bit, the wind tougher now, past midnight in the desert. “’Kay.” He stares off at nothing. “Bobby’s probably waiting up, anyway.”

Street nods, then a second later processes it. “Oh, I. I didn’t realize he was down here already.” Proud because his voice is unremarkable, though Harden looks at him briefly from under his eyelashes, waiting for him to bug out. But Street’s okay.

Shrugging again, Harden says simply, “Yeah.”

Harden’s hands are in his pockets and his arms are tight against his body, huddled against the cold, and Street thinks blankly, _they’re in love_.

He scrounges up a smile and claps Harden on the shoulder. “All right, man. See you at the ballpark.”

Harden catches hold of Street’s wrist and holds him still, his hand clasped on Harden’s shoulder, their bodies at canted angles. Street gives him a questioning look, pulse humming along, buzz of liquor in the back of his throat and forefront of his mind, and Harden seems to be looking for something in Street’s face. His fingers are hard and hot in a bracelet around Street’s wrist.

Then Harden lets him go and steps back, confusion rolling onto his face and making a line form between his eyebrows. Street tries to smile and fails. Harden turns abruptly and walks away, strange stilt-legged walk, shaking his head briskly. Street goes back alone to the small place he rented for spring training, white-walled and devoid, his bags in a pile by the front door and no other sign of life.

He lays awake for a long time. Can’t figure out what’s happening to him.

He expects Crosby to be at the ballpark, gears himself up for it, to see Crosby grinning and leaning into Harden, not as obvious as they were in Haren’s place in Los Angeles or in the bar, but clear to those who are looking for it. Crosby’s not there, of course he wouldn’t be, he’s not a pitcher or catcher and it would make no sense to those who don’t know.

It’s just like last year, first session with his body flaring and then screeching to a halt, stiffness settling in almost immediately. Everybody pale from the winter and talking too much, too fast. Harden might be avoiding him; it’s hard to tell. Spring training takes him down into little pieces and it’s almost a week before Street can sleep the night through, though he still doesn’t really.

Crosby is around, when they go out at night, when they congregate at the house he and Harden are sharing to pre-game. Street notices that there are two bedrooms, Crosby’s stuff intricately laid out on the dresser and the closet, but the bed is made and that is anathema for Bobby Crosby, so they’re not really fooling anybody.

Harden watches Crosby like he’s waiting for him to disappear. Street gets too drunk to drive home and can’t believe that he’s sleeping on their couch, thinking in dumb loops that he should just take Crosby’s bed, not like they’re gonna use it.

He can hear the two of them fighting through the wall. Too muffled to make out the words, and Street’s hand is on his own stomach under his T-shirt, slow rubs and the ceiling’s got no good advice.

Crosby’s sense of humor has narrowed, or sharpened, or something, maybe it’s just that their life together is beginning to fray, but Crosby calls Harden bitch and fucking bush league and only sometimes seems to be kidding. Zito, who usually never notices anything more concrete than colors and shapes, tells him to lighten up one night, and Crosby whirls on him, keep the fuck out of it, and everyone is uncomfortable for a while after that.

They argue quiet and fierce in the hallway. Crosby jerks his head to the side and his mouth sneers, and Harden slaps the wall, snarls something, and goes back into the living room. Crosby stands for a moment, visibly shaking.

Street can’t remember if they were like this before, if theirs is the kind of relationship where fighting is fun because making up is better. He doesn’t think it was. They were so calm last year.

He’s been told that being in love kinda sucks most of the time, though he never really believed that. End of the night, when they’re all yawning and slowly gathering themselves together to leave, Crosby will still crash down next to Harden and roll his head on Harden’s shoulder, and Harden just sort of twists and makes room for him.

They come and go like waves.

He can’t get it out of his head, the hum in the air when Crosby and Harden are in it, half violence and half darker, desire probably, the idea of which still makes Street flush and lose his footing a little bit. He corners Melhuse on the field, green all around them, asks quickly before he can lose his nerve:

“Bobby and Rich, they’re okay, right?”

Melhuse glances at him, sits down on the field to untie and retie his spikes. Street hunkers down next to him, his eyes darting side to side to make sure no one will sneak up on them.

“Guess so,” Melhuse says, gaze fixed on his shoes. “Um. Why do you ask?”

Street moves his shoulders, blue sky above him like he could drown from looking up. “Oh. No reason.”

Melhuse mutters something downward, but Street doesn’t catch it. Street’s missing everything, these days. Probably fifty times, he’s halfway across the room, gonna put his hand on Harden’s shoulder and make sure everything’s all right, but Harden is laughing every time he looks over, doing a really good impression of happy, if he isn’t really.

They’ve got two weeks to break themselves in, and they do all right. Harden’s got a new surgical scar on his left shoulder, five months healed and shaped like a crescent moon, and Street stares at it sometimes, when Harden is turned away from him in the clubhouse. Their Phoenix ballpark is small and beautiful and the light standards rise up in Street’s peripheral vision, haunt him on the drive home.

Harden shows up at Street’s rented house very late one night, pounding on the door and Street stumbles out in pajama pants and a workout shirt without sleeves. He can hear Harden mumbling through the door, smell the liquor on him immediately.

“That motherfucker,” Harden says, looking at Street balefully.

Street, half-asleep, steps aside and lets Harden come in, lets him kick over the trashcan, balled-up pieces of white paper littered like snow. Harden wrangles his shirt half-off and Street is stunned, not moving.

“He’s so fucking,” Harden begins, and trails off, gives up on the shirt. It’s wrapped around his neck and one arm, making him look tied up. “God.”

He buries his face in the cushion and is asleep before Street has time to ask what happened. It occurs to Street that his life took flight from reason months ago. He never understands anything.

Long internal debate and then Street walks over silently, carefully disentangles Harden from his shirt. Harden’s back is sloped and unmarked, fingerprints of his spine flickering. Street folds his T-shirt and puts it on the arm of the couch. Takes the blanket off his bed and lays it carefully over Harden.

He wants to curl up on the rug and make sure Harden is okay until morning, but that won’t work. Street goes back into his own room, cold for the whole night because that blanket is the only one he has.

He wakes up to the smell of coffee. Harden is drawn and hungover, the palms of his hand stained red from the heat of the mug. The same stain spreads on his face and down his neck as Street comes in, rubbing his eyes. Harden is embarrassed, Street realizes, and that makes something ease in Street’s stomach, simple low emotion like that, and Harden should know he’s got nothing to be ashamed of.

Street doesn’t ask, gets a cup of coffee from himself and sits on the counter. They’re silent for a moment, crackle of newspaper, crush of gravel as cars go past outside, and then Harden sighs impatiently, claps his mug down.

“I just needed to get out of there.”

Street nods, perfect friend, sympathetic and not bugging out at all. “Okay.”

Harden shoots him a look. “Look. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

Street shrugs, blows on his coffee. Rattle-thump of his heels on the cabinet. Overwhelming sunlight sluicing through Rich Harden’s matted hair.

“It’s just, sometimes, you know.” Harden leaves it at that.

Nodding like he understands, Street drums his heels a little harder, watching the familiar pinched line dig between Harden’s eyebrows. Bad hangover but Harden won’t tell him to keep quiet, because Street let him in last night and gave him his only blanket.

“You could tell me about it,” Street suggests, and then hides his grimace behind his coffee cup, not sure what possessed him to say that.

Harden makes a raspy little laugh, rolling his eyes. “Yeah. Doubtful.”

Even though he didn’t really want to hear it, Street still feels vaguely affronted, and he can’t keep watching Harden’s face, dark patches under his eyes, gold-brown scruff on his jaw, bitten mouth.

“Fine. Only took you in off the streets at three in the stupid morning, but whatever.”

Harden snorts. “Look at you.”

Street looks down at his legs and hands, but doesn’t see anything different. Harden’s talking on a different level.

“Why’d you come here?” Street asks. “Whyn’t you go to Danny’s? Or. A hotel?”

Harden stares at the tattered newspaper, his shoulders drawing up slowly. Street is beginning to get to know that very well, the way Harden closes up physically even though he’ll still say almost anything.

“Felt dumb, you know? Like. Me and him, it’s not. Easy. Never has been. And lately, it’s been. I don’t know. Feel like I keep getting kicked. Don’t know how to stay down.”

Street remembers Crosby playing on a broken ankle, thinking that the two of them have so much in common it’s almost scary.

“Anyway,” Harden continues, sighing. “Dan would think he has to fix it, so would anybody else. But it’s not like that.”

Sunken feeling in his chest, Harden looking dismayed, like he never expected to find himself here, and Street wants to touch him so much it makes him dizzy.

He clears his throat, banishes all the bad stuff from his mind. “You came here instead?” Didn’t mean for it to be a question. Too late, too late.

Harden looks up at him, slant-faced, sharp smile that is blue in his eyes and cold on his mouth. “Figured I hadn’t traumatized you enough for one year.”

And Street finds himself laughing, almost falling off the counter, Harden saying in surprise, whoa hey, and half-rising like he’ll be there to catch Street before he hits the tile. Street finds himself blindsided, knocked clear out of his senses because he’s got his best friend back just like that, and it wrecks him. It’s not what he wants anymore.

The position players show up and everything gets progressively louder and crazier. Harden and Crosby fuse back together in the chaos, brittle edges and neither of them look like they’ve slept in months. Street walks in on them with their arms around each other in the video room, so tight it’s got to be painful, Harden’s face hidden in Crosby’s shoulder. Street falls back out into the hallway, shouting behind him, “At least lock the door!” and it takes his heart almost an hour to stop pounding.

A week or two after that, Harden breaks Crosby’s car.

Starts off after a game, when Harden goes over to Crosby in the clubhouse and swats him on the knee. “Dude. You’re blocking me in.”

Crosby is playing Xbox with Chavez and doesn’t look at him. “’Kay.”

Harden shifts his weight, a scowl slowly moving onto his face. Street is over by the spread, watching them like a sitcom. “So. Move your fucking car.”

“Kinda in the middle of something, Richie,” Crosby tells him, twisting his shoulders. “Goddamn it, Chav. Knock it off with the laser thing.”

“Hey.” Harden is crossing from annoyed to mad, subtle change in the weather. “I’ve got shit to do, man, could you just move your car please.”

“Give me a fucking minute. Christ.” Crosby hasn’t looked up, not once.

Harden’s eyes are darkening and Street’s breath is short, twelfth-inning tension and everything in the room seems to have zeroed down to Crosby on the couch and Harden standing over him with his fists at his sides. Chavez is sneaking glances at him and gingerly moving down the couch, away from Crosby.

But Harden just turns and walks away, and Crosby mutters something under his breath that Street is glad he’s too far away to hear.

He thinks it’s over, and then he sees Harden rummaging in Crosby’s locker, roughly pulling out his bag and going right for the pocket where Crosby keeps his keys, which of course Harden would know. Street gets a bad feeling about this, watching Harden leave through the tunnel.

Three minutes later, Harden is back, red-faced with the keys clutched in his hand.

“Bobby.”

“ _What_ , I told you I’d move it when I’m done-” but Harden is laughing, crazy high-pitched laugh, and that finally, finally draws Crosby’s attention. Looks at Harden’s face, wide pissed-off eyes and the keys cutting into his palm, and Crosby gets up. “What the fuck did you do?”

Harden just shakes his head, still laughing, and tosses Crosby’s keys at him. Crosby snatches them out of the air, blurs across the room and slams his shoulder into Harden’s chest as he passes. Harden trips into the wall and covers up his face, hiccupping and calming down. His hands are shaking, Street can see from all the way over here.

Haren’s the first to follow Crosby, and then Chavez, and Street figures he should probably go too. Harden latches on to him in the doorway and Street walks the long length of the tunnel with Harden’s hand in his belt, knuckles on his hip. He asks Harden what happened, but Harden won’t answer.

Crosby is standing in disbelief at his car. The side mirror is torn almost all the way off, hanging by a wire, and there’s a jagged ugly dent along the driver’s side door, the paint scraped away. The stone post that did the damage is completely unharmed.

Danny’s got his hand over his mouth, which should be funny but isn’t really. Chavez is fingering the dent, paint chips flecking down to the asphalt. The damage is forcefully incongruent, big shiny black car, the broken mirror and naked dent like a wormhole in a waxy red apple.

Gets bad real quick, when Crosby sees Harden and starts screaming at him, and Harden, idiotically, starts screaming back. You stole my fucking keys; you should have moved it when I fucking asked you to; you’re not allowed to drive my car; except for when you’re fucking drunk, huh; son of a bitch; fucking cocksucker.

Street’s never been perfectly at home with profanity, but he’s gotten used to it, four-letter words and the casual way his teammates take the Lord’s name in vain. Painfully nostalgic, now, for his ears to burn, taste of soap in the back of his mouth, wanting to hiss at them imploringly, you _guys_.

Chavez casts a nervous look towards the pair of security guards smoking by the fence, and the kids still clustered at the entrance to the players’ lot, white baseballs and Sharpies in their hands, and says in a low voice, “Hey, dude, come on, keep it down.”

Harden and Crosby don’t pause. Street doesn’t think they’re even aware that they’re not alone out here. Crosby wrenches a hand in Harden’s shirt and Harden shoves him off. Harden’s eyes are terrifyingly bright.

“You’re fucking paying for it.”

“Like you don’t make enough money to pay for it yourself, you cheap prick?”

Crosby looks like he wants to howl. He swings away from Harden and in one quick motion, rips the mirror off the side of the car, snap of the wire, and then pegs it overhand into Harden’s car. Twenty years Bobby Crosby’s arm has been training for this moment, and a rifled crack splits the back window, and then they’re screaming again.

Chavez and Haren exchange freaked-out looks and vanish back into the clubhouse. Street stands watching for a while longer, as Harden and Crosby decimate each other with almost gleeful savagery. It seems like something he should bear witness to, because maybe later they’ll try to pretend it didn’t happen or it wasn’t so bad, try to stitch their patchwork relationship back together like they always do, and Street wants to be the innocent bystander who can swear without prejudice that, yes, they killed each other that afternoon, they went too far to get back.

So that’s that, and anyway the season’s starting, they don’t have time for this. There are steps to breaking up with the love of your life, Street thinks, denial and anger and bargaining and other ones that he can’t remember right now.

Their timeline is compressed, though, because they’ve got the team and the Yankees waiting for them back home in Oakland. They are obligated to heal and return and be oblivious to each other, because they are the hot pick this year and the lights on them hide nothing.

Harden gets kinda manic, climbing all over them, laughing that new screechy laugh. It’s godawful and unsettling. He’s usually so cool.

Crosby has mainly stopped talking.

Crosby threw him out, which is weird because Street had assumed that the house was Harden’s, Harden being the one who was supposed to be in Phoenix in February, but he must have gotten it wrong. Weeks later, Harden will tell him that he slept in his car the first night, before getting a hotel room to pass the remainder of spring training.

Street’s getting ahead of himself, but he can’t get rid of the image of Harden laid out in the back of his car, the moonlight a twining river line on his face, broken through the crack in the window.

Street makes a few aborted gestures, Canadian beer, a lightning bolt decal, the name of a garage that could fix Harden’s car without a seam, but Harden brushes him off, big smile on his face, it’s cool man, I’m okay.

Like Street can’t see his eyes. Like Harden hasn’t been smashed apart.

They get back to Oakland and Street moves in with Swisher and Blanton, a girlfriend and a wife, their rambling country-music house in the flatlands beyond the hills. Crosby and Melhuse are living together again. Harden got a place of his own. Street is glad to be removed, somewhere where love is normal and sweet and has a Kentucky accent, but he wakes up sometimes and there are no feet thumping on the roof over his head, no shouts of laughter, no rainbow-colored water balloons arching like daytime planets past his window.

In Kansas City, then, where the wind and rain populate the city more than the people, Crosby says drinks are on me and takes everyone out, except for Harden, who is not invited, and Street, who is not picking sides, just early-season tired.

Houndstooth pattern on the bedspread, red and blue woven together, and Harden comes in with two sixes of Molson, barefoot and wearing Street’s favorite T-shirt, which he thought he’d lost sometime last year, but instead was apparently stolen.

Street glares at Harden, broad shoulders stretching out the fabric and a burn mark on the hem. “Nice shirt.”

Harden looks down at himself, blinking a bit in confusion. “Yeah? It’s a little small,” he answers without guile.

Street rolls his eyes, feeling oddly better, because at least Harden isn’t a conscious thief. He’d cut the tag out of that shirt, the only bad thing about it, and he can imagine the ragged stub scratching at the back of Harden’s neck.

They drink for awhile, mirror images of each other on the two beds, pillows propped up behind their backs, the television muttering spastically. Not much to talk about, Street’s muscles all clenched up.

“You could have gone with them, you know,” he says eventually, not taking his eyes off the screen. “I mean, it’s kinda not cool for him to take everybody out and not invite you.”

Shrugging, Harden licks the mouth of his beer. “Whatever. He’s trying to be all, like, these are _my_ friends, but I was here first.”

Harden stares resolutely at the television, and Street feels bad for bringing it up. He pushes his feet at the bedspread, scrunching it out of shape. His throat is greased and two beers in, he’s starting to haze at the corners. He thinks it’s kinda remarkable.

“I’m okay, though,” Harden says, out of nowhere.

Street nods confidently. “No, I know.”

Awkward silence. Harden sighs. “This sucks.”

Not knowing what else to do, Street kills his beer and goes into the bathroom, where they’ve got the rest icing in the sink. He looks at himself in the mirror and he could be sixteen years old still, nineteen, twenty-one like last year and his ID had gotten confiscated four times by bouncers thinking it was a fake.

“Hey?” he calls out, icy wet hand smoothing a cowlick down. Harden grunts something. “Do you think we should have gotten a place together? You and me and. I dunno. Adam or Dan?”

He can hear the laugh in Harden’s voice. “These are _my_ roommates,” he mocks.

Street stands in the doorway and grins at him. Harden grins back charmingly.

“We coulda got a way better place than what he’s got, too,” Street says, leaning on his shoulder.

“As if that’s hard. Bobby’d be happy with a fucking roof and no walls.”

Street thinks about that, then says, “I’d definitely need walls.”

Harden starts to laugh, devolving into a cough in the middle of it and his face turns an alarming shade of red. Street gets frightened and comes over, puts his cold hand on the back of Harden’s neck and Harden jerks, coughing hard. Street pounds him on the back a few times and Harden pushes him away, shaking his head.

“Making it worse,” he says, gasping, but the spell has passed. Street sits down next to him and watches the color fade from his face, his breathing evening out. Harden tips his head back and his neck is still flushed.

“Fuck, man,” Harden says eventually. “You’re just so.”

Street’s head is swimming, maybe more drunk than he realized, and Harden is far outpacing him, four beers down.

“What?”

Shaking his head, Harden grins again, clean shine in his eyes. “You’re killing me.”

Street raises his eyebrows, his chest going thin and tight. “What’re you talking about?”

Studying him for a long second, Harden shrugs. “Ah. I’m drunk.”

Street nods, and gets uncomfortable sitting close to Harden like this, his hand on the bed behind Harden’s back. He goes back over to the other bed, opening his beer and downing half of it in one pull.

They drink for a little while longer, and Harden slumps back further and further on the bed, until his legs are sprawled out like matchsticks and his head is canted against the headboard in a way that looks painful. Street loses count of how many beers they’ve each had, just knows that when he goes into the bathroom for another one, there’s nothing in the ice. He also stumbles coming back into the room, almost falling, so he’s probably drunk.

He faceplants onto the foot of Harden’s bed, and Harden pokes him curiously with his foot.

“Outta beer,” Street muffles into the bed, rubbing his face on the slippery blue-red bedspread.

“Sucks,” Harden replies, and Street turns his head to the side, peers up at him, sees Harden with his head back and his eyes closed, his hand moving slowly on his stomach.

Street swallows, asks a dumb question, “Why’d you guys break up?”

Flinching, not opening his eyes, Harden’s hand comes to a stop and Street’s sorry he caused that, sorry that Harden’s hand isn’t slow and hypnotizing anymore.

“I mean, it wasn’t just because of the car, right?”

Harden exhales, his expression blurry and pained. “No. The car was just. What do you call it. Symptom. Last straw. Like that.”

Street rolls over onto his back, his legs hanging off the bed, the sole of Harden’s foot warm and flat against his side. Rolling over was maybe a bad idea, because now his mind is floating somewhere up near the ceiling, and Street puts his hand on Harden’s ankle to steady himself until the word comes back in focus.

“So why, then?”

Long pause, long enough for Street to be preparing his apology, didn’t really mean to bring it up, still none of his business. He checks and Harden is looking at him, eyelids half-mast and half-debauched, swollen around his eyes and his hair a pointy spiky curly mess.

“Why do you want to know?” Harden asks him.

Street plays his thumb on the bump of Harden’s ankle, liking the solidity of it, like a button he can press on and a door might swing open. “Drunk,” he offers, as if that’s the answer to everything.

“Lightweight.”

“That too.”

Harden smirks. He’s really very good-looking, in a way that makes Street feel fevered and slightly delirious, makes him want to drive too fast and burn photographs.

“He just bugs the shit out of me,” Harden tells him, but his mouth is moving strangely and Street would bet money that he’s lying. “He’s, like, always got to be so cool all the time.”

“You’re cool all the time,” Street mumbles without thinking. Harden rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, but I don’t _got_ to be.”

Street’s confused by this logic, though it doesn’t seem to matter. Harden continues, “He thinks, like, we can hang everything on a good start. He doesn’t. Been on fucking autopilot. And he’s always _there_. Can’t get rid of him. Promised me it wouldn’t get like this. _Promised_. Then I was like, where the fuck did you go, and he was all, still here, and, like, fuck if he was, you know?”

Harden widens his eyes meaningfully at Street as if Street’s supposed to understand that. Street just nods, distracted by the blue.

“And then he kept picking fights, like if he wasn’t gonna want me anymore, next best thing would be to hate me, which, just. That doesn’t make any sense, right?”

Street shakes his head, his hair ruffling. He tightens his grip on Harden’s leg. “Not really.”

“So, okay. He’s crazy. Whatever. Wanted a fight, fucking well got one, didn’t he.”

Harden waves his hand indiscriminately through the air, closing his eyes again, his forehead lined. Street is all of a sudden impossibly sad, can feel it down in his bones.

He rubs a circle around Harden’s ankle bone, staring at the ceiling, more drowning than swimming now.

“Do you miss him, Richie?” Street asks, not at all sure what he’s going for here, so drunk the world looks like watercolor.

Harden sighs again. “He gave really good head,” he says wistfully. Street, shocked, jerks his hand off Harden, and Harden cracks up.

“Dude,” Harden says through his laughter. “Dude, what is with you tonight?”

Street sits up, the room reels, and he puts his hands on his head, steady now, steady. He doesn’t know if he wants to hear any more of this. Doesn’t know if he wants Harden to be all the way over at the top of the bed.

“I was just askin’,” dropping his g’s, accent coming on strong. He feels Harden sitting up, sliding down. Harden folds his legs in, sits Indian-style with his knee pressing into Street’s hip.

“I do miss him,” Harden says, serious for once. “He was, like. Everything. For so long. Keep trying to remember when it started, like, what day was it, where were we, what was our record. No good, man. Because, Bobby, he’s,” and Harden’s voice is breaking up like AM radio. “He’s always been. Just. Always been.”

Street looks at him and sees Harden all foggy and shivering, his hands fluttering on his knees. Street wants to place his fingers on Harden’s forehead, slip down so that his eyelids will close and he’ll stop looking at Street like that.

“Not enough to get back together, though?” Street says, hating the hopeful lift, showing too much just like always.

Harden considers it, then shakes his head. “Nah. I. I know about things being over.”

He looks awful for a moment, his face bleak and downcast, but then he smiles, sudden and sharp and fake, and touches his forehead to Street’s shoulder, making Street jump. They’re so close, and Harden smells like beer and the jelly beans they’ve been buying cheap since Easter.

“Wanna know something? ‘s a secret,” Harden murmurs, his breath clouding through the thin material of Street’s shirt.

Street swallows so hard he feels his throat click. He keeps thinking, he could half-turn and put his hand on Harden’s leg, above his knee, denim and muscle pulled tight. Keeps thinking that there are reasons why he shouldn’t, can’t, but when he tries to remember what exactly they are, they’ve vanished.

“Sure,” he manages. He can feel Harden smiling, can feel him lifting his head and propping his chin on Street’s shoulder, breath so warm on his face and Street’s so drunk, closes his eyes and forces his hands to stay on his knees.

Harden whispers into his ear, “I did it on purpose.”

“What?” Street whispers back, glad they’re talking so low, because he doesn’t think his lungs would provide him volume right now. Harden’s hand snakes around his wrist, and Street is doing everything he can to remain perfectly still.

“His car. Did it on purpose. Wanted to fuck it up. Bobby, he, he loves that car so fucking much.”

Letting out a shaky surprised breath, Street opens his eyes and Harden moves back slightly when Street turns to look at him. Up close like this, Harden’s face is dimly flushed and his cheekbones stand out. Street keeps picturing stone angels with upturned hands full of snow, but he knows that’s not right.

“That’s terrible, Rich,” he whispers, meaning it, because you shouldn’t try and hurt someone like that, it’s better when it’s an accident.

Harden lifts one shoulder, looking almost like he’s gonna cry. “It was pretty bad for me, too.”

And Harden shifts as if to move away, and Street doesn’t think, reaches up and curls his fingers on the back of Harden’s head and clumsily brings their mouths together.

Teeth-painful and Harden sucks in a stunned breath from Street’s lungs, split second to taste Molson and red cherry, and then Harden is slamming back, falling onto the bed, his eyes huge.

“What the _fuck_ , Huston?” he almost screams.

Through his immediate and numbing mortification, Street has time to see that Harden looks scared more than mad, and Street stands, shoving his hands in his pockets, mumbling, “sorry sorry sorry,” like a rosary.

His eyes are wet and he thanks god he’s spent so many nights in hotel rooms, he can find the door blind. But Harden’s stopping him, saying his name again, saying, “Wait, hey, come on,” and the wheeze of the mattress as he gets up.

Catches Street’s arm at the door and flips him easily and Street wrenches his head to the side, blinking superspeed to keep the tears in, to keep from having to look at Harden’s face.

“What was that?” Harden asks, sounding completely lost.

Street shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “Nothing. Stupid. Won’t do it again. Really sorry.”

“No, but,” and Harden’s hand is on his stomach, when did that get there, wide and firm and fingers curving around his side, holding him in place against the door. “You’re not. I mean. You’re from _Texas_.”

It’s almost enough to make him laugh, if he weren’t so destroyed.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Street says hopelessly, concentrating on the arch of Harden’s hand on his stomach, thumb clutching at the edge of the muscle.

“But you’re not _gay_ ,” Harden insists, half-panicked. “You don’t even like me being gay.”

Street tries to will himself out of existence, but it doesn’t work. His face is so hot he imagines the air between the two of them is rippled with heat shimmer.

“That’s not. You just assumed, but I never. Never said that.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, dude.”

“Don’t swear,” Street responds out of habit, then winces. He wishes Harden would let him leave, wishes Harden would take his hand away.

Harden does, and Street’s knees almost bow with relief, but then Harden touches his jaw, pushing his chin up, and that’s worse, because that makes Street’s eyes come open and Harden’s face fills his vision, white-black fuzz at the edges and Harden is dazed, staring at him like Street just pulled down the moon.

“You. You want this?” Harden asks in astonishment, moving his hand in the thin space between their bodies.

Street shakes his head automatically, his tongue feeling too big, his heart high in his throat. He doesn’t want this, doesn’t want the heartbreak that is Crosby and Harden’s defining feature right now, doesn’t want to sneak and hide, doesn’t want his life to be ruined, doesn’t want his car messed with.

Harden’s expression falls, anger swiftly planing his face. “Then what the fuck?”

Street takes a deep breath, cleaning the debris out of his chest until it’s vacant and free. “It’s not this that I want,” he says slowly. “It’s. You.”

And he doesn’t know where the difference is. He hasn’t explained it very well, it caroms around in his head like a lost marble, sucker punch to say it out loud, even broken up and incoherent. Now it’s in his mind forever, clawing to get out, _want you, i want you, not this but you._

Harden stares at him, dumb blue eyes and his lips parted slightly, and Street feels about fourteen years old, waiting to get beaten up. But Harden never does what’s expected, and something flares in his eyes, spike of white teeth as he almost smiles, and then his hands are on Street’s shoulders and he’s driving him even harder into the door, hiking him up a little bit because Harden is kissing him.

Harden is kissing him, one hand rising to Street’s forehead and pressing down, angling his head back so that Harden’s got more leverage. Harden is kissing him, knows more about this than Street could ever hope to, with his teeth intentional this time, nipping at Street’s lip, and when Street gasps, Harden licks the insides of his mouth. Harden’s body is pinning him in place, knee pushing between Street’s legs.

Street is kissing him back, and he realizes that after far too long, after his hands are already cupping Harden’s face, coffee-hot ears under his fingers, soft wrinkled hair. His tongue is caught momentarily in Harden’s teeth, sting, and then he can taste everything, beer strong and cherry weak in the background, wet here and so hot he feels the paint peeling at his back.

Dropping his head into the crook of Street’s neck and shoulder, Harden carves strange patterns on Street’s collarbone, and he’s pushing Street’s shirt up, long battered fingers on Street’s ribs and stomach, and Street is fighting hard for air, his hips moving out of control.

Harden mutters, “here, let me,” and rips Street’s pants open, one-handed and the other is clutching at the back of Street’s neck. Street makes a sound he has never made before, strangled whine, and Harden brings them together again, kisses him hard enough that Street’s head clocks back against the wall, and stars, amazing collapsing stars behind his eyes.

Happens so quick. Harden’s hand pushing into his shorts and once, twice, thumb running in a line, bare and dry and Street has never been so naked, never done anything like this before. Harden knows, they’ve played I Never and Street didn’t drink once, so Harden is whispering into his ear, “It’s okay, c’mon, you’re fine,” as his hand is moving and Street is shuddering, begging him for something undefined.

Harden licks Street’s earlobe and twists his wrist and Street comes all over his hand and a little bit on his formerly favorite shirt, livewire through his whole body, vision whiting out. His legs give out and he slides down the door, crumpling on the floor at Harden’s feet.

High-note happy for a moment as he lies there and draws in ragged cuts of oxygen. Like he’s made of silver, like he could fly. Harden lies down beside him and his arm hooks around Street’s chest, kissing Street’s shoulder and throat. Awed, Street nudges Harden’s face until their mouths meet again, and Harden groans and sort of rolls on top of him, and that’s incredible. Paperweighted by Harden’s body, the rain can’t get to them and Street can feel all of him, hard against his stomach and Harden’s jeans chafing Street pretty badly as he works his way between Street’s legs. Street doesn’t care.

He’ll never care about anything again, because he’s got Rich Harden rocking into him, taking Street’s hand and wedging it between them, both their hands pressing against Harden through his jeans, and it’s not weird at all, like Harden’s harsh breath on his mouth is not weird, and Harden’s chewed-up voice saying his name is not weird.

Street rubs as well as he can, the angle being what it is, and Harden braces himself on his knees so that their hands aren’t crushed, free to move. Harden’s other hand is by Street’s head and Street can hear his watch ticking. Street stares up at him, still too drunk and too young and too new at this, can’t get over the way Harden bites his lower lip in concentration and tips his head to the side.

Baffled to find himself thinking that he wants to do everything, wants to skid down Harden’s body and put his mouth on the hollow of Harden’s hip, suck a bruise there, wants to touch him everywhere. Wants everything that Harden can do to him, even the stuff that will send him to hell. Even that, because this is the best he’s ever felt, right now.

Harden over him like the sky, and Street reaches up, brushes his fingertips across Harden’s cheek, and Harden looks down at him and smiles and finishes, gripping Street’s wrist.

They lie there together on the floor for a long time. Street is almost painfully happy. Harden burns a line all along his side, his arm back over Street’s stomach. Street’s shorts are tugged up, but his jeans are still gaping open, and he likes that, it feels cool and dangerous and grown-up and other things that he’s never been before.

Woozy from the fading drunk, yawning and his jaw pops, Street rests his cheek against Harden’s hair and falls asleep. He wakes up several hours later, to Harden prodding him and saying his name.

“Dude, you’re in front of the door. Hey. Huston.”

Street blinks slowly and the room is dark. Harden is crouching beside him, his hair wet and smelling of shampoo. Shower steam curls around Street’s body. Street is stuck half-drunk, half-asleep, like waking up after two hours with sleeping pills still dragging in his system, like a caffeine overdose.

“What’s going on?” Street asks hazily, his body protesting every movement. Takes him a minute to remember what happened, and then Street’s eyes fly open, Harden a dim silhouette.

“I’ve got to go, man. You’re blocking the door.”

Street stiffens, scared at once and so bad his teeth chatter.

“Oh, um.” He sits up. His jeans are still undone, and he fixes them with trembling hands. “Okay.”

Harden cocks his head to the side, and stands, offering Street his hand. Street lets himself be pulled up and weaves into Harden a bit, his equilibrium shot. Harden doesn’t steady him, though Street thought he might, with his hand flat on Street’s stomach, clasping his shoulder. Something.

It’s so dark, and adrenaline is making Street feel seasick.

“So, I’ll. See you later, I guess?” Street says, wondering endlessly why Harden isn’t staying, why they aren’t pulling the sheets back and crawling into bed, jeans finally gone once and for all, skinned and warm against each other.

Harden’s eyes glitter. “Are you, like. You’re not freaking out or anything?”

Street shakes his head emphatically. He’s been freaking out for eight months now; he’s well over his limit.

“Because you look kinda like you’re freaking out.”

“I’m not the one leaving,” Street snaps, and is horrified at himself, shrinking back. His eyes prickle with tears, and he’s so tired of this.

But Harden makes a surprised noise and comes to him, walks Street backwards into the wall and the memory snags heat through Street’s heavy limbs. Harden just leans into him, though.

“I’ve got to go. If I stick around somebody’ll see me leaving in the morning.” He speaks with assurance. He’s done this a million times before. Harden hooks his hands in Street’s front pockets. “You’ve got to trust me, man.”

Street nods, poled by the feel of Harden’s knuckles high on his legs. Harden kisses him, sweet and clean like Street’s life used to be, and whispers against his mouth:

“It gets better after this.”

Then Harden leaves, one last smile in the triangle of yellow light from the open door, then gone.

Street undresses mechanically, gets in bed and curls up with his knees against his chest and his heart hammering. Doesn’t realize he’s crying until he tastes salt. Harden might know all about it, second time through, but Street is going to be caught off-guard by everything, constantly losing his balance, his direction, his faith, every day until the day that it ends.

And it will end, of that there is no doubt. If his brief major league career has taught him anything, it’s that nothing this good ever lasts. That’s not even the worst part.

Huston Street is already clocking their descent. Just one night, and he’s already steeling himself for the holocaust ahead, not even in love yet and already waiting to fall out of it, because life rebounds like this, and Street only knows how to go up.

THE END

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Inside Out](https://archiveofourown.org/works/263327) by [candle_beck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck)




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